Talk:Hamburger button

abbreviation

The hamburger button is now being shrunk in the horizontal direction which reduces it to 3 dots. Are the three dots still called a hamburger?
⋮ which is also known as a vertical ellipsis. 87.102.44.18 (talk) 11:21, 25 November 2016 (UTC)

I think it's a kebab icon Mullafacation (talk) 10:43, 15 August 2018 (UTC)

Yes! I created Ellipsis button last year, but it was deleted. Not enough content. The Ellipsis button is a button placed typically in a top corner of a graphical user interface. It takes the form of an icon that consists of three dots (displayed as ⋮). It is also known as the kebab. So if anyone wants to flesh it out and try again, please do! — tbc (talk) 17:18, 6 July 2019 (UTC)

Refactor 11 October 2018

Following comments at ANI and AfD I've chosen to try and give this article a quick makeover, hopefully its an improvement but its not perfect but hopefully its got a clearer structure, not to say it may be improved by reverted to less sections and more prose if it matures and stabilises. I have taken on good faith their are no issues with existing references and incorporated all of them inline. There certainly remains opportunity for improvement and refinement and possibly rewrites. I am inclined to suggest this remains on Hamburger Button. Collapsed Menu Icon is about an Icon not the button ... an Icon is not a button. So menu icon or Collapsed Menu Icon wouldn't be good for a rename (perhaps ok for a redirect) and Collapse(d) Menu Button probably isn't any better. So I think the Hamburger has it in my book (which was not by initial thought on the matter). No doubt I have also left an opportunity of Spelling, grammer and wikilink followers. Thankyou. Djm-leighpark (talk) 09:03, 11 October 2018 (UTC)

Other names

Other names that were previously in the article have been removed without explanation that I see:

• hamburger, sandwich, hotdog, pancake, tribar (or triple bar), double oreo or options button.

There is also an unsubstantiated claim that hamburger is the more common name. I added a citation needed for that, but even if hamburger is more common, Wikipedia should list all names in use, not pick a winner. I have seen usage online for all of these names except double oreo. --- Vroo (talk) 06:32, 5 January 2019 (UTC)

March 2019

Following this edits, a reversion then reinstatement I've tried to work through dilligently seeing what the issue are. Which has taken me a considerable amount of RL time. The immediate concerns were loss of the programming section, loss of (potentially) useful sources/citations that have taken time to acquire, and the fact the criticisms section did not read well for me. I think I've left most of the edits by Minxreign in place. Overall my comments are:.

• References: It takes considerable time to find sources and put them in an article, and very little time to lose them. And sometimes there is good stuff in them. (I haven't been through them all again but there was a messy AfD/move/copy-paste merge in Autumn(fall) 2018). I think a solution for me on that is to create a Workpage to hold any that people feel they don't need at the time.
• Programming Section:. I like the idea of having a little of the technicality behind it so people can wikilink off that way. (OK I know there's the list of widgets in the template at the bottom. Peoples can skip that section if they like.
• Criticisms Section: Its been really useful to have this as bullet points as its easier for people to put suggestions/improvements in or out. But perhaps the sections matured enough to go to prose. When I read it as a paragraph it 'did my head in'. Splitting it into two subsections made it a much easier read. There may be scope for changing the subsection titles or merging the subsection titles into each bit of text to give to paragraphs.
• Alternative icons: This sentence gets in the way of the flow of the main part of the paragraph. (I thought I'd moved it out before but perhaps I lost an edit).
• Hatnote: This is a mark one attempt to define what is and what is not in the scope of the article.
• lede: I'm trying to make sure both the 'button' and 'icon' and functionlity are covered within the scope of the icon. I've also attempted to gently introduce Widget.
• I also went down to Triple bar#Application design and observed there is some cross cover with this article. Longer term this relationship probably needs to be examined ... a merge at this point would probably cause more pain and disruption than benefit.

There will be no doubt view good faith views and comments on this. I may be slow to respond due to the hamburger mention here

Programming section

I propose this removed section should be restored. Per guidelines I am not continuing into an edit war. The article encompasses various aspects including technical. I opine the section is valid though alternative names and content improvement suggestions are welcome. The references may be how-tos but that is perfectly acceptable, pullout of a how-to out of the references would be a different matter. Thankyou. Djm-leighpark (talk) 20:01, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

Hamburger Image

I don't think the hamburger image is accurate. It's a picture of a Big Mac type with 3 pieces of bun and 2 patties: top bun, patty, middle bun, patty, bottom bun. I think the image should be a regular hamburger with top bun, patty, bottom bun. I think that those are the three parts suggested by the hamburger button (not the 3 bun parts). — Preceding unsigned comment added by Scott Seltzer (talk • contribs) 10:01, 15 December 2019 (UTC)

User:KalWal added a diagram in February supporting the three-bun interpretation, while promoting a Finnish mocumentary across several articles that (seemingly as a joke) pushes this view of the icon.

Using any particular image would be WP:OR, if we were interpreting the icon one way or the other without a source. I'll remove it for now. Belbury (talk) 13:24, 10 December 2024 (UTC)

100% agree. I am quite certain anybody seeing this icon and being told it "looks like a hamburger" assigns the middle line to the meat, and the top/bottom to bun. Spitzak (talk) 19:21, 10 December 2024 (UTC)

Waffle Menu

I just heard this referred to as a "waffle menu", when this kind of menu is instead stylized as a little 3x3 grid of dots (as I've seen Google do, as one example). Is there any support for usage of that term? Perhaps that could be a redirect to this page? 216.228.112.21 (talk) 22:31, 27 August 2021 (UTC)

I once saw it called a bento menu, but now this name seems to have undergone a damnatio memoriae. 84.88.59.39 (talk) 08:29, 23 April 2025 (UTC)

Alternative Names

Alternative names such as "oreo menu" seek to provide a more descriptive and intuitive representation, leveraging the familiarity of the oreo cookie's sandwich structure. As suggested by @Vroo, 5 January 2019 (UTC) other names include but are not limited to sandwich, hotdog, pancake, tribar (or triple bar), double oreo or options button.

There is also an unsubstantiated claim that hamburger is the more common name. 1b843iqa73 (talk) 18:05, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

"Not a textual character"

In changing some wording on the page, I incidentally claimed that the hamburger button was not a textual character. It's not clear to me that this is true, considering I would have said the same about ⏻ but it was later added to unicode — apparently based on the arguments in https://unicodepowersymbol.com/ that it is a textual character, as it's used in running text to illustrate the button.

Either way, I'm not sure how to write the relevant section without saying or implying (especially implying by absence) that the symbol is or is not a textual character. So, I leave this note here in case anyone has any great ideas in the future. Dingolover6969 (talk) 09:50, 9 March 2025 (UTC)

Calling it hamburger menu in historical uses is misleading

I think the change to calling this "hamburger menu" in every reference gives the wrong idea. Just at a glance one could assume it was originally made to look like a hamburger. For a long time it was just called "the menu button" (or something similar). It was intended to look like a menu. It brought up the menu. Calling it hamburger over and over might make sense by modern eyes, but it was always just a nickname by people who didn't know the real word for it. It's arguably not even the real word for it, it's just slang that became popular. It would be like changing the entire [Command key]] article to read "Cloverleaf button" in every reference. This also needs a solid reference for when the whole hamburger thing first gained popularity. It seems like something that started in the smartphone era/explosion of glib online reporting era from a lot of less sophisticated users making guesses at things on a tiny screen. If that guess is true, hamburger button absolutely should not be used to describe events in history before that name ever developed. It should be referred to as "menu button" or what later became called the hamburger button, or some other clarifying information. ~2026-24177-23 (talk) 18:48, 9 July 2026 (UTC)

This does seem misleading, particularly when Norm Cox recalls referring to it as an "air vent". I can't find any usage of the hamburger term from before 2013, from a quick search. It would be good to get more context on when the term started to be used.

I'll update the History section to mention Cox's term, and edit out the implication that they've always been called hamburger buttons. Belbury (talk) 19:18, 9 July 2026 (UTC)

I also think the term "hamburger menu" is made up or at least extremely little-used. People who call the button a "hamburger button" usually call the thing that appears when you click it a "menu", not a "hamburger menu". Spitzak (talk) 19:35, 9 July 2026 (UTC)